The present invention relates to a communication terminal. More particularly, the present invention relates to a cellular phone capable of receiving a TV program.
The conventional TV system connectable to a network adopts a technique whereby, in order to prevent the seeing and hearing of a TV program from being obstructed, the TV system displays an email-arrival-displaying screen showing detected arrivals of emails, which have been received while the user of the TV system is watching the TV program, after a program scene has been replaced by a commercial screen. This technique is disclosed for example in Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2002-288084 serving as patent reference 1.
In accordance with the technique disclosed in patent reference 1, however, arrivals of phone calls and emails, which are received while the user is watching a TV program, are reported later without considering factors such as the priorities of the phone-call maker, the email sender and the TV program. That is to say, even though an incoming phone call or an incoming email is received while the user is watching the TV program, it is desirable to let the incoming phone call or the incoming email take precedence of a TV program being watched if the incoming phone call is made by an important caller or the incoming email has been sent by an important email sender and/or TV the program is not of much importance. Thus, although the TV program is not so significant as the incoming phone call or the incoming email, the user is not immediately informed of the arrival of the phone call or the email. In other words, if a TV program is not of importance to the user in comparison with an incoming phone call or an incoming email, it is desirable to inform the user of the arrival of the phone call or the email in accordance with the priority of the phone call or the priority of the email even if the phone call or the email is received while the user is watching the TV program.
In addition, the disclosed technique does not consider a feature of informing the phone-call maker of the end time of the TV program. Thus, the phone-call maker does not know when the TV program will end, allowing a received phone call to be accepted. As a result, in some cases, the phone-call maker needs to make a phone call again and again several times till the TV program watched by the user serving as the phone-call target is ended, giving rise to a trouble. If the phone-call maker is informed of the end time of the TV program in such a case, the trouble can be avoided, providing the phone-call maker and the phone-call target with convenience.
It is thus an object of the present invention addressing the problems described above to provide a communication terminal offering much convenience to the phone-call maker and the phone-call target.